Ode to Jerdehl

In late November of 2023, I became enchanted by Takumar's "perma-audio" code after hearing their compos in Elmet Brae — EB01, a compilation done by members and friends of my mastodon instance. (You can hear my humble contribution here.

During the same period, I discovered a project called December Adventure. This initiative, created by Eli, encourages coding enthusiasts to write a small piece of code every day in December. It's supposed to be a relaxed and stress-free journey, allowing participants to enjoy coding without pressure.

I loved the idea and decided to fully immerse myself in Takumar's code for the entire month. And oh my, It was an exciting journey of exploration and discovery.

As I started to explore the code, experimenting with different oscillators, I quickly came up with something that resonated deeply with me. It was an eeire but beautiful piece that seemed to capture the essence of devotion. As I pondered to whom this sound would be dedicated to, the name "Jerdehl" suddenly popped into my mind. Intrigued by the mysterious connection, I felt a strong pull towards dedicating this song to her, even though I couldn't fully explain the significance.

If you're curious to know what/who Jerdehl is, I encourage you to delve into the vast depths of the internet, where you can easily discover more about her. It's a journey that will undoubtedly take you down an unexpected rabbit hole.

For the entire month, I worked a bit on the project, almost every day, writing notes on my December Adventure Logbook. Slowly, it become something real.

By the last days of 2023, after weeks of tinkering, I successfully assembled a portable setup that autonomously played "Ode to Jerdehl".

The setup uses a Raspberry Pi Zero (with a USB soundcard), a compact battery, and a portable speaker. It also looks pretty much like a bomb as of right now, so I'm not planning on traveling with it for sure.

The source code is available on merveilles's forge. With December 2023 long past, I'll centralize any sporadic updates here.

2024-03-01

Code moved to merveilles's forge.

2024-02-25

Released "Ode to Jerdehl" on Basecamp, where I jammed with some synths on top of the familiar drone of Jerdehl Zero.

2024-01-24

Added The Ode to Jerdehl page and removed the December Adventure 2023 from my Projects page.